Then I picked up Tori at her condo. A cool wind whipped inside my car, and she closed the door quickly to keep it out. The temperatures were falling. It wasn’t going to be a white Thanksgiving, but it was going to be a cold one.

  She had her trademark long white coat and nice boots, always nice threads, but that was the only thing about her that looked normal. Her eyes were hooded and her face drawn. She looked like she hadn’t slept well at all.

  “I didn’t,” she said, when I commented. “And thanks for noticing.”

  “Big math test coming up?” I asked, even though I was aware that she had finished her last final exam a couple days ago. She was off until mid-January now.

  She looked at me. “Is that you making fun of me? You got something against math?”

  “No, hey—I love math. Math is the greatest thing since… science.”

  “Because that sounded like condescension. And that’s about the only thing I can’t take from someone.”

  I had obviously struck a nerve with her that I hadn’t seen coming. “Tori, I’m sorry. That’s not how I meant it.”

  It was the first time I’d seen her get her back up about something. She was basically a cool customer, aloof, in control. Something had put her on edge.

  Our relationship was odd. I really didn’t know that much about her, and she didn’t know much about me. We kept the topics safe. We kept each other at arm’s length. All I knew was that the more time I spent with her, the more time I wanted to spend with her. Maybe it was her aloofness itself. I’d considered that possibility. I’d never been in a relationship where I was the pursuer. When I was in school, I was a jock, and girls followed athletic success like day followed night. Not necessarily the kind of girls you’d settle down with, but who the hell wanted to settle down?

  Then there was Shauna, but she’d started as a pal, so that just sort of happened for a brief spell before we decided that our friendship worked better than romance. And then there was Talia. Even Talia took the first step with me.

  I’d never felt like I was more interested than the lady. Until now.

  Tori said, “I was working on your case, if you want to know what I was doing. And I found something.”

  “Okay, great. What?”

  “Kathy Rubinkowski has a Facebook page.”

  “Oh—okay. Facebook. Okay. Did you find anything interesting?”

  “No, because we’re not ‘friends.’”

  “Well, obviously you and Kathy weren’t friends.” I looked over at her as I drove.

  “Do you know anything about Facebook?” she asked.

  “Sure. I know some shithead stole the idea from two other shitheads, or something like that. And there was a movie about it where everybody spoke in incredibly intelligent, fluid sentences.”

  “You are hopeless. She has to invite me to her page, and she obviously can’t now. So I can’t get on her page, is my point. But if someone could find a way in, I’ll bet you could find her e-mail address on her ‘information’ page.”

  “Ah, e-mail. I know e-mail. Okay, I get it. If we can get her e-mail address, we can hack her e-mail and see if anything was on her mind.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. You think Joel is able to do something like that?”

  Interesting. He probably could. “There might be some ethical challenges there, yes?”

  “Technically,” she conceded.

  “Technically? Tori, I’m seeing another side of you.”

  “You’re seeing a side that doesn’t want some poor, sick kid to take the fall for something he didn’t do. That’s what you’re seeing. This is hardball, not softball—isn’t that what you always say?”

  It was. I hated it when people used my words against me.

  “Shit, where are those Mapquest directions?” I patted the seat around me and looked down at the floor. “Look in the back,” I said.

  She did. “I don’t see it. There’s some big file.”

  “That’s the Gin Rummy dossier Joel put together.”

  “You’re still spending time on that?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “You were right. It’s a waste of time. Even if I find Gin Rummy, he won’t admit to anything. But Joel went to all this trouble, and I’m not even paying him for this shit. So I’ll try to read it. I mean, he has biographies and background material. It’s like an encyclopedia. I’ll get to it at some point.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I’ll just pull the directions up on my iPhone.”

  “You can do that?”

  “You’re really a dinosaur, aren’t you?”

  “I prefer ‘old school,’ Tori. You can pull up directions on that thing?”

  “Sure. I’ll just type in the name, get an address, and then set the GPS.”

  “Great,” I said. “So type in the name ‘Summerset Farms.’”

  45.

  “Tell me, Bruce,” said Randall Manning.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” McCabe shrugged. “Just general nerves, I guess.”

  “Identify it, Bruce. Tell me specifically.”

  Below them, inside the dome, the cleanup was already under way. Shell casings were being collected, dust was being swept, the bulletproof tarp was being pulled down.

  McCabe looked at Manning. “It’s the lawyer, Kolarich. The whole thing.”

  Manning nodded. “He won’t figure this out in time, Bruce.”

  “But he’ll figure it out eventually. He’ll connect us to this. And if we take him out now, isn’t that a red flag? He clearly has his sights trained on us, and suddenly he winds up dead? We thought we had complete anonymity, Randy. There was no way any of this was going to connect to us.”

  That was never a certainty in Manning’s mind, or anywhere close to it. He had planned this well and chosen the operatives well, but he had no illusions. He knew that the odds were quite decent that he, personally, would be caught. He’d always told his men that they had to be willing to die for this mission. He preached it to them. McCabe was part of the Circle, of course, but he wasn’t one of the operatives. He did the necessary legal work to get everything set up to put the mission in place. But that was all.

  And now things were coming to a head. It wasn’t just an idea now. It was happening.

  “I think we’ll get away with it,” said Manning. “And then we’ll lie low and wait for another opportunity. But yes, Bruce, there are risks. Surely this isn’t the first time you’re realizing this?”

  McCabe wasn’t dumb. Of course, he had to have been aware of the risks. But he’d placed trust in Manning, perhaps more than Manning had realized. And he hadn’t had to get his hands dirty. He wouldn’t be putting his life on the line on December 7. Maybe it was only now dawning on him what, exactly, they were going to do.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Bruce here today, to see up close a dry run of the operation.

  Or maybe it had been a good thing, in the end. If McCabe was going to go south on them, better that Manning knew that now, not afterward.

  “I think we should abort,” said McCabe.

  Manning put a hand on McCabe’s shoulder. “Let’s go eat, Bruce. Everyone’s tired and stressed and hungry. Let’s have some turkey and think this over. Go on ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Manning watched his lawyer walk out the door. Then he dialed his cell phone.

  “Patrick,” he said, “wait five minutes and then come up to see me.”

  46.

  Traffic was nonexistent on Thanksgiving afternoon. We got off the interstate and followed the local roads. The housing was sparse and modest, and there wasn’t much for commerce besides gas stations, bait shops, and an occasional diner. Nothing was open today.

  We found the street we were looking for, aided by a small sign that said SUMMERSET FARMS with an arrow pointing to the right. I turned right and drove down a paved road.

  We pulled up to a long metal gate blocking the road. On the gate was a sign reading SUMMERSET FARMS IS CLOSED.

  We got out of the SUV, if for no other reason than to stretch our legs after more than two hours in the car, and walked up to the gate. Down the road, there was a long ranch-style house and a gigantic barn, all painted red. And behind that housing was farmland as far as the eye could see. Shauna had mentioned that when Global Harvest purchased the farm, it bought up neighboring farmland.

  “You didn’t expect it to be open, did you?” Tori asked me. She looked like a fish out of water, a well-dressed, cosmopolitan woman in farm country. I suppose I didn’t look much like the town, either.

  And no, I didn’t expect Summerset Farms to be open on Thanksgiving.

  “Why the gate?” I asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe vandals or robbers.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” The gate was fastened to a post. It didn’t appear to be hydraulic. I pushed on it, and it moved. So I kept pushing, and it kept moving, until I had cleared a path for my vehicle.

  “I’m not the lawyer,” said Tori, “but I do believe this would be trespassing.”

  “Hardball, not softball,” I reminded her. “You don’t have to be a part of it. You want to go for a drive and come back in an hour?”

  She thought that was amusing. “I’ll stick. It wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  With the gate out of the way, we returned to the SUV and drove up to the small parking lot. We got out and walked up to the ranch house. The front door was locked, as expected. There was a window, and I peered into the place. Not much to see for my purposes. It was a reception area with what appeared to be standard office space behind it. I guess they didn’t sell their products to walk-up customers, or if they did, it didn’t happen here.

  We walked over to the barn. The main door, which was taller than me, had a gigantic padlock securing it. There were no other windows.

  “Okay, that’s what I figured,” I said.

  Tori peered up at me, squinting into the sunlight. “We came all this way just for this? You discover that the place is closed for Thanksgiving, try the door, peer into a window, and that’s—”

  “That’s not it,” I said. “That’s just it for here.”

  We returned to the SUV and retraced our steps past the gate. I closed it back up and drove down the road, following the fence line of the property. On the other side of the fence was a pretty weak-looking set of wheat crops, stubbly things, but I knew as much about wheat crops as I did astrophysics, so for all I knew the crop was doing quite well.

  The land was pretty flat around here. I finally came upon a hill to my left. I followed a dirt path, which I was pretty sure was a road, up the hill and then stopped the SUV.

  “Glove compartment,” I said to Tori.

  She opened it and removed a fancy camera that I’d taken from Joel Lightner. She handed it to me.

  I got out of the vehicle and climbed onto the hood. I helped Tori up, then helped her climb to the roof. Then I joined her.

  “This is… unusual,” she noted.

  The camera was something a good P. I. like Lightner would use, a high-powered lens attached to the camera that could get a decent image from over a mile away.

  Through the camera, I looked out over the Summerset Farms acreage. The crops were sparse, stubbly, and brownish-green, like a neglected summer lawn. As I moved beyond the borders of the property line, the crops became even more sporadic and then nonexistent, just a bunch of dirt as far as the eye, assisted with this high-powered device, could see.

  “That’s a lot of acreage Global Harvest bought that they aren’t using for wheat,” I said.

  “Let me look,” said Tori.

  “Hang on.” There was a large metal structure with a domed top. I didn’t know what it was. Some kind of a warehouse or silo.

  Then I saw something that didn’t look like farming at all.

  It looked like a bunch of guys shooting assault rifles at targets. The distance was such that I could barely register the sound of gunfire, but my eyes didn’t lie.

  “Check this out.” I kept the camera in position and motioned for Tori to take it. It moved a little when she grabbed it, but it didn’t take her long to find the same thing I found.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “What are they doing? I mean, I know what they’re doing. But…”

  In my peripheral vision I saw a pickup truck barreling down the road toward us with a yellow siren flashing on top. The truck skidded to a stop down the hill from us. The truck’s side panel was emblazoned with SUMMERSET FARMS SECURITY.

  The man who got out was wearing a green uniform with a brown leather jacket over it. A firearm hung from his hip holster.

  “Can I ask what you folks are doing?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  He stared at me. I stared at him. We stared at each other.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “None of your business.”

  “It’s our business, all right.”

  “I’m exercising my First Amendment rights,” I said. Just like, apparently, they were exercising their Second Amendment rights, but I didn’t say that.

  He didn’t think I was funny. He was built like a tank, plus he had a weapon.

  “I want to see some identification,” he said.

  “And I want to see peace in the Middle East, but neither one is going to happen today.”

  “Get down, sir, and get into my vehicle.”

  “As tempting as that sounds, I’m gonna pass,” I said.

  The guard ably removed his sidearm and trained it on me.

  “God, Jason,” Tori said to me under her breath. “Let’s get down.”

  That made sense. The guy with the gun aimed at us wanted us to get down, so we got down. We climbed down to the hood, then I jumped off and helped Tori do the same.

  “Get behind the wheel,” I whispered to her.

  “Now get into my vehicle, both of you.” With the hand that wasn’t holding a gun, the guard snapped a photograph of us with his cell phone.

  I walked toward him, showing the palm of my right hand (the camera was in the left) to indicate I was no threat. I put myself approximately between the sight line of his gun and Tori. I heard the SUV’s door open and close. Good. Tori had gotten in. The car was still running, so all she had to do was put the car in drive and take off if she were so inclined. If I were her, I might be tempted to do just that.

  “She’s not going anywhere,” the guard said. “Neither of you are.”

  “Take it easy, Deputy Fife,” I said. “Before you hurt somebody with that gun.”

  “Hand over that camera and get in my vehicle.” The guard was beginning to understand that I wasn’t in a compliant mood.

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I’m an officer of the court trying to serve a subpoena. It’s against the law for you to interfere with me.”

  “That’s a helluva way to serve a subpoena, on the roof of a car.”

  “I’m creative.” I turned so that my back was to the man. “I’m getting into my car,” I said. “You’re going to have to shoot me in the back to stop me.”

  I moved slowly but without pause. They were ten of the longest steps I’d ever taken. But what could this guy do? How could he explain putting a bullet in my back?

  “You’re not driving away!” he called out. “You’re not leaving with that camera.”

  If only he knew what I knew. I’d screwed up. I hadn’t snapped any photos. I’d handed the camera over to Tori, and then Deputy Dawg here showed up. That was a miss on my part. A big miss. Lack of sleep = mistakes.

  But at least I got into my car.

  “Drive,” I told Tori.

  And she did. She’d had time to adjust the seat so that she could reach the pedals. The gas pedal definitely worked. We took off over the hill in a burst. Smart move by Tori. She didn’t retrace our steps and risk passing the guy. She drove up over the hill and out of sight.

  “He seemed like a nice guy,” I said to Tori as we headed back to the interstate.

  Tori looked behind us through the rearview mirror. I shifted in my seat and turned around. Nobody followed us. Once we were on the interstate, Tori stopped looking behind us.

  “You picked today because you thought you’d have some freedom to look around the place,” she gathered. “And because you thought if something illegal was going on here, today might be one of the days those illegal things would be happening.”

  “Plus, it seemed like a nice day for a drive,” I said. “No, you’re right. Maybe now we know why Randall Manning is so sensitive about his sales records with Summerset Farms. Maybe fertilizer isn’t the only thing being transferred from Global Harvest International to Summerset. Maybe they’re running guns.”

  “Is that all they were doing?” she asked. “Then why were they shooting them, too?”

  “Maybe checking the merchandise. Making sure the weapons work okay.”

  She looked at me. “Is that what you really think?”

  I was trying to downplay what I’d just seen. But it wasn’t going to work. Tori saw it for what it was.

  “No,” I admitted. “It looks like they’re training for something.”

  47.

  Randall Manning and Bruce McCabe walked along the floor of the domed building. Everything had been restored to normal, the shell casings picked up, the farm machinery returned to its rightful place. The men were finishing up their shooting practice outside.

  Manning had considered having the target practice inside to maintain cover, but decided against it. The operation would take place outside, and he wanted the men accustomed to the elements. If it was sunny, he wanted them used to shooting with the sun in their eyes. If it was raining, they had to be prepared for that. Today the sky was clear and the sunlight was strong. Three weeks ago, they’d practiced in wind and snow.

  Everyone had eaten. It had been a full Thanksgiving feast that Manning had catered in. Like Manning himself, none of these men had anyplace else to be. None of them had family to speak of. That was no accident. It was why they’d been chosen. It had been a slow, methodical search for months, finding just the right candidates—disaffected, angry, violent individuals with no familial connections and either nationalistic or outright racist views. Finding them, to Manning’s surprise, had been the easy part. It was winnowing them down to the best among them that had taken more of his time.

 

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